Fabrication of grating structures in chalcogenide films using direct exposure

Abstract Chalcogenide glasses are widely applied in the fields of infrared optics and nonlinear optics, which has spurred extensive research into their processing and fabrication, particularly for grating structures. We propose a novel method for fabricating grating structures in chalcogenide glass thin films utilizing their photobleaching effect via direct exposure, which is a physical process driven by light-induced oxidation and bond rearrangement. This phenomenon leads to localized changes in the refractive index, enabling the creation of high quality gratings. Two kinds of grating structure were fabricated which perform well in the diffraction effect. This method is easy to implement and cost-effective, making it ideal for large-scale production with promising applications, particularly in integrated photonics.